Northern Ireland
Stopping Ulster's clock
Rawle Knox
Londonderry Join the Army: become a professional and deliver the milk at Ballynacally Beg. That was the prospect that deterred the Army last weekend, when senior officers in Belfast advised against troops taking over civil duties; not any brotherly sympathy — as seen in some Ulster Protestants' vision — that might produce another Curragh Mutiny. But the indignation of the SDLP and of the public (Brian Faulkner concurring) prevailed. The dedicated republicans who, a few years ago, wanted nothing but the British Army out, now insisted that it go further than the Army itself thought it prudent to tread. Northern Ireland at any rate appears no nearer civil war than it always is, though one hopes the Army has orders for that contingency also.
Last week in Derry, British soldiers were firing rubber bullets at a crowd of Catholics trying to remove a road block illegally set up by Protestants. The benighted army might feel it is in Wonderland having to rely on the RUC to take down Protestant road blocks some of which have been seen to be manned by off-duty members of the Ulster Defence Regiment while the fraternisation of the Constabulary with the paramilitary Ulster Defence Association (which more normally is doing road-block duty) extends on occasion to playing football with the pickets.
Was it only two weeks ago I was writing of
the IRA's Wild West gun-rule in Derry? In Belfast since then the Ulster Workers' Council, assisted by the UDA, has produced its own Munich putsch with far more success than Hitler did. The army ignored this as far as possible.
Nothing could have sounded or read more stirringly than the British Cabinet statement that it would not be "intimidated or threatened by blackmail" and would not negotiate with the UWC. The words would have been easier to hear and to read if we'd had some electricity to do it with. Not the British Government, but the public of Northern Ireland is being blackmailed. And if the public turns on Brian Faulkner, as it shows signs of doing, there will be no Executive left for the British Government, in all its wrathful majesty, to support. The writing has been on the wall for a couple of months: literally so, for on the grey concrete of the housing estates anti-Sunningdale graffiti have multiplied. Faulkner survived by a hair's breadth last week, when the Executive announced that the proposed Council of Ireland wouldn't be a Council at all for the time being, but a ministerial gettogether between North and South. The Northern Ireland voters would then have another look at it in their 1977 election. To this flurry of readjustment London and Dublin could do nothing but agree. Whether Faulkner threatened to resign, or if Gerry Fitt or all the Unionists and SDLP members of the Executive did, is immaterial, since they all now must have resignation hovering in the forefront of their minds. Faulkner was the only one who tried to pretend that the postponement of the full plan for a Council of Ireland had nothing to do with the UWC strike. The climbdown came a day after the above quoted declaration of unshakeability from Westminster.
Dublin is pained, and with reason. The Southerners should have read the situation better than the insensitive Brits, but they didn't. Many hung on to the belief that if the Northern Protestants became really disillusioned with Westminster they would edge, if cagily, toward Dublin's welcoming bosom. Now they watched horrified as the rampant 'Loyalists' far from divorcing Britannia announced their own terms for keeping the marriage going. It is true that there are those among the United Unionists who would accept power-sharing with Catholics in a newly-elected Assembly, but only, they say, on a 'voluntary basis.' That means having in the Executive one or two hand-picked Catholics who would do as they were told; a proposition far from that agreed between Leinster House and Westminster.
Ian Paisley and Harry West and William Craig have been consumed in the fire of their own words. For months they had shouted of wrecking the elected Assembly at Stormont, of forcing the British Government to see democratic reason, of the strength of Protes tant power that they were only with difficulty restraining from violence. In conference at
Portrush last month, the United Unioniet5 even produced a 'Blueprint for Selective Sanctions to Implement the Will of the People.' And still absolutely nothing ha,g: pened. So, a little over a fortnight ago, UWC, a comparatively new grouping of meird of the kind Ulster Unionist politicians w°1!,', regard as their followers, almost nonchalaim: told those supposed leaders of theirs that the' intended to bring industry in the province to a standstill. They then left the conference table and did just that. They started the stril:e even before they had properly defined thei 1 political objectives. Only after a few days chu,1 they settle down to the single, simple dernan" for new elections. Not surprisingly such In° were unmoved by the sudden Executive an' nouncement of a modification in the plan f9;' a Council of Ireland, that most horriv bugaboo in the UWC's vision of Sunningdal.e'C To hear Harry Murray, UWC chairman, °I that withering accent of his, laconically di,sci missing Faulkner's explanation, you wow, wonder why London and Dublin and Belfas' 'spent all that money telephoning one anotileirci,Ii The strike was a grim success after HacT g Wilson's outraged rebuttal of Ted Heatil; accusations that Labour had encourage', F political strikes by giving in to the co a h miners, it's amusing to hear UWC spokestnel righteously saying that their 'constitutiOna stoppage' was not made with intent to defy 0r, tl change the law of the land, but simPlY
secure their democratic right. .1i
The UWC may not have had the same til°' tives as the coal miners, but the lessons of the d miners' strikes had been well learned. Thie a power stations were quickly controlie°' because in the good democratic days of the di old Stormont, which United Unionists want tO see back again, only faithful Protestants jobs as electricity workers. For the at reasons the dockers and oil distributors Were 0' easily manipulated. A few Orange ordet5 stopped the clockwork. Ulster ran down with such frightening t} speed that those politicians, who had thera' selves for so long threatened doom, becaine alarmed. Craig sounded badly scared. Harr)i g West, once a Minister of Agriculture at Ste ic mont was pathetic in his attempt to explain r°d farmers, who at first had no animal feed an, ei then no outlet for their overspilling livestoei' because all the meat factories were closed' that things weren't as bad as the broadcastel made them sound. One thing you can say Ian Paisley is that he doesn't scare easily. may be so used to preaching of Armageddo" that he has acquired a feeling for the place' Harold Wilson's bitter broadcast last Sa' turday helped no one this side of the Water' ti What most astonished people here was the 0 quick assumption in London, encouraged PaLrhaps by the brave Len Murray's belief in tue, virtues of Trade Unionism, that the Ulster stlike was simply the work of a minority of t i21.4s and bullies. Certainly there was nonntlation, but the more the Protestant workers saw that the British were unsymI]athetic, sometimes derisory about their uelhands, the harder they got, and the more „saPPort they drew from their co-religionists. :t.ae Catholics were among the first to see `las: The things they said about us and did to
us after Bloody Sunday," said one, "brought us all closer together. It's the same with them. You can put up with hardship if you believe in a cause and think you're getting somewhere." The UWC has almost certainly got somewhere and with such ease that Westminster may have to -think again about governing the ungovernable.
Rawle Knox, the distinguished foreign correspondent, now lives in Londonderry and writes regularly from there for The Spectator.
Previous page
